Content, such as text, images, and video, may be stored and displayed on the Internet. For example, an online service provider (OSP), such as Google or YouTube, may display images as a result of a text based image search or video posted by users. There are many cases in which content on the Internet is being used in a non-compliant way. Non-compliant content may include material that violates third party copyrights or trademarks, is illegal (e.g., child pornography), or otherwise does not comply with a content owner's terms of use or with an OSP policy. Examples of potentially non-compliant use of content include bloggers copying text from news reports, eBay sellers copying other seller's listing content, aggregators republishing listings from other sites, spammers using copyrighted text to create web pages to influence search results and generate advertising revenue, or even innocent/accidental use of non-compliant content by a conscientious consumer.
Content on the Internet is difficult to monitor for compliance. Typically, a content owner manually monitors the Internet for copies of the owner's content through repetitive queries in search engines like Google. In some cases, the use of the owner's content is permissible under their own license terms or under legal principles such as the copyright concept of “fair use,” which considers such factors as whether attribution has been provided, what portion of the content has been used without permission, and whether the content has been used for commercial purposes (such as generating advertising or subscription revenue). Content owners have no automated methods to evaluate the context in which their content is used by others.
Even when non-compliant use of content is detected, typically it is difficult to remedy. In the case of copyright non-compliance, the content owner's objective usually is to cause the content to be removed from third-party services that host the content or search engines which refer users to it through their indices. This typically is a manual process which involves submitting a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA provides OSPs and search engines with a safe harbor from copyright infringement liability if they promptly remove content from their service upon request by the content owner. Therefore, when a content owner finds a copy of his content, he can choose to send a take down notice under DMCA by writing a letter or an email to the OSP or search engine. In response, the OSP or search engine typically must manually remove the content from their service to avoid liability.
From an OSP's perspective, monitoring for content that does not comply with the OSP's host policy is also typically a manual process. When OSPs monitor content as it is uploaded, typically a human views and approves content before (or after) it is displayed and non-compliant content is rejected (or removed). OSPs also must manually review and compare content when they receive DMCA notices, and often have little information to determine if content is out of compliance and no automated way to determine the identity or reputation of the complaining party. As the amount of content on the Internet grows, manual content monitoring and enforcement processes are becoming increasingly impractical. Therefore, improved methods for monitoring content and managing enforcement of non-compliant content are needed. In addition, there currently exists no means to automatically verify content ownership, e.g., for the purpose of facilitating the negotiation, transaction, and/or enforcement of content license(s), and a solution to this problem would also be desirable.